Tools for Transitions: Resources for Educators Helping Students Displaced by Hurricane Katrina

Students and their families who have been displaced by hurricane Katrina face a myriad of challenges, both personal and academic. In turn, the Texas schools now serving many of those students must find ways of helping student evacuees to succeed in an environment in which the curriculum may be as unfamiliar to them as the classroom and the faces in it.

This set of training materials is intended to help address those challenges. It is designed for professional developers — regional Education Service Center staff, local curriculum supervisors, and others — who in turn will work with teachers whose classes include Katrina evacuees.

The training materials focus most extensively on academic issues, particularly the instructional implications of key differences between instructional standards in Louisiana and Texas. However, they also include a focus on helping teachers to recognize and address the short- and long-term effects of the trauma resulting from Katrina and its aftermath.